100 customers, 8 offices, 160 employees
RELEX, the Helsinki headquartered provider of the world’s most powerful supply chain solutions, has just won its 100th customer and taken on its 160th member of staff.
Founded 10 years ago by three doctoral students from Helsinki University of Technology, the company has set itself the target of being a global market leader.
In recent weeks RELEX announced that growth equity firm Summit Partners had bought a minority stake for €20M. The capital is being used to fund rapid worldwide expansion and to boost the development of RELEX’s market-leading ‘in-memory’ powered software.
Having announced its first customers outside Europe this year, RELEX has just opened its first office in North America with a base in the city of Atlanta, and is poised to follow with its first office in Southern Europe, in Italy. RELEX now has offices in 8 countries, including the UK and Germany, and also partner support in South Africa.
The company has had to put extra effort into recruiting top graduates, and supply chain and software experts. Four years ago the company employed just 25 people, yet in the last 12 months alone it has hired seventy-five and will be stepping up its international recruitment next year.
Among these recruits have been talented developers and engineers attracted by the company’s rapid growth and the opportunity to work in different parts of the world. “We give colleagues a lot of personal autonomy,” explains RELEX’s VP of Product Tommi Ylinen. “Our employees choose the tools they want to use, the latest technology and they can explore areas of development that interest them.”
“The biggest driver of RELEX’s growth has always been word of mouth and customer recommendations,” says Co-founder and Group CEO Mikko Kärkkäinen. “When you have ten customers saying good things about your systems and your expertise that’s one thing, now we have a hundred customers saying great things. We’ve developed real momentum.”
“We celebrate our 10th birthday in January and I feel that 2016 is really going to be our year,” ends Kärkkäinen.
“We celebrate our 10th birthday in January and I feel that 2016 is really going to be our year”